Читать книгу The Lieutenant's Lady - Bess Streeter Aldrich - Страница 4

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Linnie went down to breakfast, tired from her half-sleepless night and cross with herself because it had been so. Envying another girl her young man was bad enough at any time, but when the girl was your own cousin and you scarcely existed in the man’s sight, it took on the quality of being addled in the head.

Cynthia, however, was gay and talkative because of her new happiness, the whole breakfast centering around the subject of her betrothal.

At least she attempted to have it center around herself, for it was never possible that any human could be the middle point in a circle if Henry Colsworth were near.

Aunt Louise was at the table, too, this morning. One never knew whether or not she would appear. She was enjoying delicate health, which rather set her apart from the feminine portion of a town whose pioneer women largely were hale and sturdy.

When one of Aunt Louise’s weak spells overtook her, she accepted it passively. At the least physical excitement or the slightest exercising of an emotion she would say resignedly, “It’s come,” and get comfortably into bed. Her blue-veined face looked like a piece of delicate Chelsea ware. Her pale hair was parted and combed tightly down to a heavy bun at the nape of her slight neck, which gave her ears, unusually large for so small a person, an appearance of standing out nakedly as handles do on a china vase. Gentle and colorless, she seconded her breezy husband’s decisive statements like a faint and hesitant echo.

Just now, after the excitement of her daughter’s betrothal, it was all she could do to hold up her head through the long meal. There were boiled potatoes and dried codfish gravy, oatmeal and cream and hot corn bread, and Uncle Henry was attacking them all with gusto even as he talked.

“The young man spoke to me privately in New York, and I took pains to inquire about everything. When I found out the well-to-do York state family he came from ... then I said to myself I knew ....” Yes, Uncle Henry was assuming much of the conversation and all of the credit. “I like the young man but I don’t like the army connection. We’ll have to see about him locating here. All kinds of opportunities to get ahead. But he’ll never get anywhere in the army. I can put him on to something suitable.”

“Yes, Cynthia, we can get him something suitable,” Aunt Louise echoed, like the daughter of Air and Earth who pined away until nothing was left but her voice.

It occurred to Linnie over her corn bread that Norman Stafford did not seem like a young man who could be pushed around into something suitable.

“He told me he felt quite devoted to the army,” she volunteered.

Cynthia bristled. “I guess I’m the one who knows about that.”

“Oh, well, the army’s work will all be over in a few years anyway.” Uncle Henry disposed of the future of the United States Army with one sweeping sentence and a wave of the hand. “The dirty Injuns’ll all be cleaned up and there’ll be nothing more for the army to do. Towns are growing up around the forts now. Look how Fort Des Moines came along, and Fort Dodge, Fort Madison, Fort Wayne, and all the others ... and now Fort Leavenworth, Fort Scott, Fort Collins, and dozens of ’em will come along the same way.”

If only all the disturbing events of the early days of the trans-Missouri country could have been settled as easily and decisively as Henry Colsworth was settling them verbally!

“Now that the war’s over, the next thing is to lick the hide off the Injuns ... and then there’ll be peace for two hundred years.”

“Ha! Ha! Fit to kill,” Polly called out from her cage.

Olga came in with fresh corn bread, talked readily about the news of the betrothal, too much a friend and neighbor of the family to be called a hired girl. “I got two pattern new qvilts, Cynthy, de evenin’ star and one dey say to me is floo de liss.”

“They don’t have that kind in the army, Olga,” Linnie laughed. “Just army blankets.”

“You seem to think you know a lot about it.” Cynthia’s voice had a sharp edge.

Uncle Henry told Olga to speak to Magnus about getting the horses hitched. Magnus was Olga’s husband, and although there was scarcely enough for him to do around the place all day it pleased Uncle Henry to have a stableman and to be driven the few blocks to his office behind a pair of spanking bays.

The shingle in front of that second-story office said “Lawyer,” but inasmuch as there were fifty-five of the species in the young town, it was merely a title behind which to carry on multiple activities, buying and selling real estate, speculating in various commodities, constructing a new store building or two to rent, and, although he was not a member of the territorial legislature, doing a great deal of “fixing” in back rooms behind closed doors.

So Uncle Henry went to his office, and Aunt Louise, tired from her struggle with a boiled potato, lay down on the horsehair sofa. Olga trudged in and out carrying away the dishes. Cynthia, in a pink print which made her look like a grown-up doll, dusted Mozart in the parlor and a black-framed picture of Lincoln in the back parlor. And Linnie, no longer mere company, went upstairs to make beds.

Some time later when she came down, Norman Stafford was there in the parlor saying good-by to Cynthia. Seeing her, the two came out into the hall, so that Linnie shook hands with him and said good-by, too.

He looked very fresh and fine this morning in his uniform.

For a moment he stood looking gravely down at Linnie, crisp and pretty in her blue-and-white striped print. “I want to thank you for our pleasant conversation last evening. I found you most intelligent.”

She flushed to the roots of her hair and said: “I thank you heartily.” Both procedures were characteristic of the day.

“You’ll look after her, Miss Linnie?” His gray eyes, warm with their new love, were on Cynthia. “This is the first time ‘the girl I left behind me’ ever meant anything to me but a noisy tune.” Then he turned back to Linnie, and the corners of his mouth drew down in their droll way: “And keep your left eye on that funny-man, George, too.”

It was as though they alone knew a secret, laughing together that way.

Linnie said indeed she would, with Cynthia pouting coyly: “Oh, you two! You’re just trying to make out I’m flirtatious!”

Then Linnie went upstairs so that he might have a few more moments with the girl he was leaving behind him. From back of the curtain, shortly, she saw him swinging off down the hilly street in his erect way. Then, because no one came near the room, she stayed there at the window until she heard the long hoarse whistling of the down-river boat.